Tholian Missions

Captain's Blog Stardate 90124.79

This past week Cryptic updated the Tribble test server with a new set of missions. Essentially it is the same as the Defera Invasion Zone where you have to battle the Borg, except this is on Nukara Prime and you have to battle the Tholians.

First let me start with the Tholians themselves. Cryptic did a great job at creating them. As some of you may know, there is very limited information and pictures on the Tholians since they didn't appear in many episodes. I'm really glad to see that they did some homework and create the perfect Tholian.

Now on to the missions. As I said earlier, this is essentially the same thing as the Defera Invasion Zone. I only did the Easy and Zone missions. You have to go around and kill Tholians, collect stuff, destroy things, etc. They did make it a bit different because on this planet (since it is a Tholian planet) you need to wear an EV suit. If you don't, you'll almost instantly burn up and die. So that is a nice little twist.

Even though it is similar to the Invasion Zone, it still feels different. I do like the enivronment, the Tholians, and everything about it. I just really can't complain.

Head over to Tribble and get to the Nukara system in Eta Eridani and test it out. I can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Written by Attilio on July 08, 2012 at 10:23 pm

Comments

Xu'Amat(Guest) said...July 09, 2012 at 07:52 am

The only thing I didnt like was, the fact that the Tholians are in EV suits on thier home planet, in their native environment. Isnt that like us wearing scuba gear to go outside?

I've been fortunate enough to play through all possible Nukara missions with the fleet I'm in on Tribble, and to me, the best part is fighting lots of formidable enemies without having to remodulate your weapons at all. What a relief!

The exterior still has some lag issues, and all its particle effects from the wind and waterfalls can put a strain on some older video cards, but it's very playable overall, especially the interior cave levels. Both easy and medium levels are doable solo (I find that the Breen CRM cryo gun helps until you get a sonic damage weapon from the reward boxes you get for completing missions). Naturally, for the hard missions, you're gonna want a team, but not just any team; a seriously well-oiled machine of a fighting force. If you go in blind with foolish fools, you're gonna die...a lot.

The interior hard room is quite a visual treat, and involves an Alamo type defense mission where you have to protect an energy core from an invading tholian army in order to destroy a HUGE piece of mirror universe technology (you'll have to go there to see what it is for yourself). The battle is intense (one of my absolute favorites in the entire game now), and you'll have to hold the line on all sides for five minutes to win. I recommend two full teams at the very least in order to have the best odds of success at this time. Otherwise, you'll be overwhelmed pretty quickly.

The exterior is the hardest on Nukara in my opinion, yet the most surprising (and frustrating) of all. There's a massive boss to fight, portals that spew forth tholians that snare you in a way that reminds me of skilled cowboys with lassos, and a rising level of acid water in which they attempt to drag you into. It's EVIL to say the least, and challenging regardless of your character build or career. As of now, the mission is bugged in that it doesn't give you credit for completing it, but we've developed combat strategies that make the going a bit easier, and will make a big difference when Nukara comes to Holodeck.

Finally, there's the new Crystalline ground set which has a rarity similar to the STF elite prototype pieces. Like the sonic guns and regular armored ev suits, you get the pieces from the reward boxes (with highest chance from the Elite boxes you get from doing the Hard missions). I have friends that either have the gun, or EV armor, or shield, but not all three. Each piece looks outstanding, and I can't wait to see if it unlocks a sweet new costume like the STF sets do.

I'm very happy with Cryptic's work on Tribble lately, and my anticipation for Season Six is now through the roof. :-)

I've played a bit on Nukara at the Easy and Medium levels. The missions are fun with one exception. I started the mission "Closing Doors," where you have to use special chips to disable Tholian portals. I ran out of time the first time I tried it, so I went back several more times trying to complete it. However, after the first time through, there were no portals anywhere on the map. It's hard to destroy ten of them if there are none around to be destroyed. Also, the rewards for completion are almost always EV armor. One of my characters picked up eight of them, almost twice the number you would need for two away teams. Lastly, the Fleet Marks you get are not great. I can get as many doing "Colony Invasion" once as doing the Nukara missions six times.

All that said, the missions are fun and you can do two at once, thus allowing you to double up on your rewards with little or no additional time and effort required. The Medium missions are designed for two to three palyers, but I found no problem doing them solo. (The problem of the missing portals would have been the same for a team as it was for me alone, and when they were there, I had no difficulty destroying them). I can easily understand why I see so many of our Tribble fleet members spending most of their time on Nukara.

I have not been playing as long as most people on here but must say that I was disappointed by the Tholian "missions". Although their are different levels of difficulties this essentially does nothing to make up for the need to play new missions. I played through all of the missions playing only two or three hours per night for one month. I was certainly hoping that with Season Six that there would be actual missions and not a Tholian "Zone". Perhaps Season Seven will bring more missions. (Also a comment on the person who said that the Tholians are wearing EV suits: What lead you to say this because they look normal to me.) Based on the Tholian that you encounter in the "Rescuing the Founder" mission I did expect the Tholian home world to be more gaseous.